Gevo talking to ‘several other major jet fuel buyers’ about its alcohol-to-jet fuel

Gevo CEO Pat Gruber reported the company’s supply agreement with Virgin Australia and the associated project for renewable alcohol-to-jet fuel (ATJ) are “geared to proving out the supply systems in Australia” as well as to generate interest in Queensland for production of ATJ (seekingalpha.com, 06-Nov-2017). Mr Gruber added the company continues to work with “several other major jet fuel buyers and are making progress, although getting solid offtake agreements is taking longer than we expected”. As a result of this, Gevo has pushed out its goal of obtaining binding supply contracts that represent at least 50% of anticipated expanded capacity at its expanded Luverne facility into 2018. The uncertainty of oil price, combined with the policy debates surrounding Renewable Identification Numbers for sustainable aviation fuel “has not been helpful, causing many players to go slower, waiting to see what happens” according to Mr Gruber.